As an important hospital task, the quality and efficiency of nursing practice directly affect the medical quality and sustainable development of the hospital. Increasing attention is now paid by managers to nursing teamwork. From the level of the nursing team, this study explored the relationship between team roles, using teamwork as the intermediate variable, and team performance to provide a theoretical foundation for the human resource management of nursing managers. Taking 29 general inpatient areas of a tertiary general hospital in Beijing as research objects, a questionnaire survey was used to collect basic information on nursing staff, teamwork, team roles and team performance. The collected data were analysed. A pathway analysis based on a multiple regression analysis was used to interpret the effect of each team role on teamperformance. ①The mean and maximum value of emotional type (Teamworker and Finisher) were the largest in the role combination of nursing team. In the team role combination, the average value of emotional type was 12.58 ± 1.48, with significant difference (P<0.001). ② The average level of emotion, thinking and decision of team role combination is positively correlated with work performance; The average level and maximum value of emotion have a positive correlation with team cooperation; The average level of willingness was negatively correlated with team cooperation, job performance and satisfaction (P<0.05). ③ Teamwork plays a certain intermediary role in the mean value of emotion to improve level of team satisfaction and performance. This study identified the important roles of different types of nursing staff in work performance and used a pathway analysis to create a path showing each role. Increasing the emotional-type nursing staff in a team can not only improve the mean level of team emotion but also effectively improve both teamwork and work performance.